An Introduction to Visual Culture - Softcover

Mirzoeff, Nicholas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415158761 ISBN 13: 9780415158763

Publisher: Routledge, 1999

Synopsis

This is a wide-ranging and stimulating introduction to the history and theory of visual culture from painting to the computer and television screen. It will prove indispensable to students of art and art history as well as students of cultural studies.
Mirzoeff begins by defining what visual culture is, and explores how and why visual media - fine art, cinema, the Internet, advertising, performance, photography, television - have become so central to contemporary everyday life. He argues that the visual is replacing the linguistic as our primary means of communicating with each other and of understanding our postmodern world.
Part One of the Introduction presents a history of modern ways of seeing, including:
* the formal practices of line and colour in painting
* photographys claim to represent reality
* virtual reality, from the nineteenth century to the present.
In Part Two, Mirzoeff examines:
* the visualization of race, sexuality and human identity in culture
* gender and sexuality and questions of the gaze in visual culture
* representations of encounters with the other, from colonial narratives to Science Fiction texts such as The Thing, Independence Day, Star Trek and The X-Files
* the death of Princess Diana and the popular mourning which followed as marking the coming of age of a global visualized culture.

About this title

Review

"Following his excellent critical anthology on visual culture, Professor Mirzoeff brings us a wonderful body of pioneering scholarship in this volume, one that recommends itself as essential reading in this fascinating, new area of study." -Olu Oguibe, Stuart S. Golding Endowed Chair in African Art, University of South Florida

From the Back Cover

An Introduction to Visual Culture provides a comprehensive introduction to the exciting new interdisciplinary field of visual culture.

Tracing the history and theory of visual culture from painting to the World Wide Web, An Introduction to Visual Culture asks how and why visual media have become so central to contemporary everyday life. Mirzoeff suggests that our primary way of understanding the world is now visual, and not textual.

In this innovative textbook, Nicholas Mirzoeff explores:

What is visual culture?
Elements of the visual, including perspectives, colour, line, and vision.
A wide range of visual forms, including painting, sculpture, photography, television, cinema, Virtual Reality, and the Internet.
The importance of `raceand ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and the body in visual culture.
The international media event which followed the death of Princess Diana, as marking the coming of age of a global visual culture.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0415158761
• ISBN 13: 9780415158763
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 292